Recent content by WoodlandBrew

A couple of days in the fridge is normally sufficient. The rate at which the yeast settle decreases with time, so as time goes on your error would go down. There will be "a mixture of live yeast cells, dead yeast cells, hop debris, proteins and possibly other adjunct materials" independent...

As nutrients in the wort are depleted the growth rate slows and the yeast will build up their glycogen reserves. When pitched into a fresh wort there will be another lag and growth phase as a colony. (Although the lag phase will be short if there is a significant glycogen reserve or if the...

It's actually high maltose corn syrup. There is almost no FAN in it. Very different than malt extract.

That's an interesting read, but I'm not sure that it would represent results from an all barley high gravity wort most homebrewers would prepare. Do you think this could be Nitrogen limitation? A 12°P wort requires 150mg of FAN per Liter which is 12.5mg per liter degree Plato.[1] It looks...

You're doing more right than you give yourself credit for. As long as you correct for the alcohol it's a fine way to measure final gravity. 80°F is actually the ideal temperature to rehydrate, but it is too warm for fermentation. As long as you aren't doing a whirl pool to separate debris I...

When you used the refractometer for the final gravity did you adjust for the alcohol in the beer? (If you didn't do the correction, then the actual final gravity is 1.017. See here: http://www.brewersfriend.com/refractometer-calculator/ ) Also, refractometers are more sensitive to...

Most likely that's just about where it will stop, and that's fine. Knowing the OG, recipe and mash schedule would help to firm that up. If you want to do an experiments to find out if that really is the final gravity then you could do a fast ferment test or chromatography.

Water filters can harbor bacteria. I wouldn't trust it. It's actually the heat from the microwave that kills organisms, not the radiation, so if you got it up to a boil in the microwave that would be fine. 100g (3.5oz) of DME and 1000ml of water (32oz) seems to be quite common. It's really...

If you use bottled water and DME directly from the manufacturers bag there is no need to boil. The manufacturing processes are quite sanitary.

I appreciate your honesty and think i understand where you are coming from. In some bottle dregs I've seen as much as one bacteria cell for every 10 yeast cells. Plating to grow a colony from a single cell is actually quite simple, and I've done it in my basement using Tupperware. It seems...

Less handling is almost always better when dealing with low viability cultures. If I'm going straight from the bottle I actually do the first two steps in the bottle. Although, every time I have looked at bottle dregs under the microscope I have seen bacteria along with it, so I normally start...

If you do use one of the popular calculator mentioned, keep in mind they are designed based on a 9°P (1.035) wort. If you use a gravity that is different you will need to scale your results accordingly. With this calculator you can see the effect with different gravities...

Yeast growth is directly proportional to the amount of extract consumed. So more DME is more yeast. The amount of water doesn't effect growth directly. (This is called a yield factor and for S. Cerevisiae it's about 0.1 gram of yeast produced for every gram of equivalent sucrose. 1 gram of...

I wouldn't sweat it but... I was just reading a paper on this subject. Yeast without nutrient at room temperature is very different than yeast fermenting wort at room temperature. (G0 vs G1 phase). The higher the temperature, the more active the metabolism is. If there is a carbon...

The apparent attenuation listed as a yeast specification is the attenuation after a set amount of time. Generally 6 or 10 days. It's a combination of fermentation rate and the final gravity. When comparing brewing yeasts final attenuation there are really two categories. Those that can...